The Diablo III Website announces a new version 1.0.2a patch is now live for the action/RPG sequel. This includes updated tooltips for fixes in the recent hotfix and a couple of reduced rewards for replaying a couple of quests. The Patches Scrolls has a manual edition of the patch for those having problems with the automatic update. Here are the patch notes:

General

Tooltips for the following class abilities have been updated to reflect changes made in patch 1.0.2 and previous hotfixes:

Demon Hunter

Smoke Screen (Skill Rune – Lingering Fog)

Monk

Fists of Thunder (Skill Rune – Quickening)

Mantra of Healing (Skill Rune – Boon of Inspiration)

Wizard

Energy Armor (Skill Rune – Force Armor)

Nigel Cutthroat has recently fallen on hard times and will now drop lower quality items when slain

Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying "Heart of Sin: Get the Soul of Azmodan" have been reduced

Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying "Heart of Sin: Go to the Keep" have been removed

Auction House

The maximum duration for posted auctions has been reduced from 48 hours to 36 hours

There are a ton of AH bots now and people using Autohotkey scripts to nab specific items before others. The Inferno gear market is insane, I'm glad I'm already geared up. There are at least two working kill bots already that basically just farm gold and items for you. The timing works out well for me though, I'm basically done with D3 for the time being. I've got a crazy set of high end gear (that also manages to be utterly boring) and have beaten Inferno. There are few sets or interesting uniques to collect and most are sidegrades at best. This game needs a loot table injection badly.

This game is bad effin news as it is now. I've played diablo 3 with 5 friends that live nearby who are new to Battle.net and 2 now have had their characters stripped and needed a "rollback"

Blizzard absolutely should be providing these "authenticator" dealies in the box with the game, because it's sure as hell the only way a person can have even semi-confidence in the security on Battle.Net. The place is a cess-pit of hackers and World of Warcraft lifer "Blizzard defense squad" Bobby Kotick knob-slobbers.

They are issuing refunds to people who are not satisfied with the game within 30 days though. I just don't know that I care to exert the energy required to give 2 fucks about anything going on with this game now..

Though I *did* uncover this little gem of an application for windows users that basically allows you to use the mobile authenticator app's functionality on a windows PC:

It's legit and works well, and for those of us that dont give a shit about smartphones or shelling out $7 more to Blizzard/Activision after paying $65 for the game, just so we can have any semblance of security on *their* service.

peteham wrote on Jun 2, 2012, 12:03:Every item now is essentialy locked to a level-range with a specific stats budget, and with random stats. You can either hope to get extremely lucky, or just use large-scale statistics to your advantage and use the AH. There's no specific items/builds to shoot for. The entire gaming experience from 1-60 feels like a WoW-like grind where the entire journey and everything you pick up on the way is throw-away junk in the end because you know that once you unlock the next bracket, anything you've got on you will be easily replaceable over the course of a few hours. Holy leveled loot, Batman.... Diablo 2 sure as hell wasn't like this.

Diablo 2 had this staggered difficulty curve where you'd occasionally get the intensely satisfying feeling of *really* going up in power when you found a new unique, or put some additional skillpoints in your core skills. In Diablo 3, I'm feeling none of that. It lasted for a short while during the first 20-30 levels as you unlocked runes, but after that? The skill- and difficulty curve, with the exception of cheap monster combinations, has been more or less completely flat all the way to inferno, with the occasional +15 <primary stat> here, and +10 there, which only serves to even things out while you grind your way to 60.

I'm currently bored to tears with D3. I hope a future expansion or mega-patch fixes it. The current state of D3 really isn't that different from Diablo 2 Classic. Before the expansion, there were no exceptional quality uniques, no rune-words, no sockets etc.. All you could do was hunt rares and hope for lucky combinations, so I never played MP much until the expansion came out and transformed the whole game for the better. Maybe we'll get lucky and Blizzard finds the secret sauce again in two years' time ... Of course, after the hours I've put into the predecessor, I shouldn't completely rule out genre fatigue either, but I definitely feel as if the magic is gone for now.

Great post and write up of the problems with the current state of the game. People blame it on "the community" but that's just code for "me no likey contrary opinions". The reality is that most of the people complaining are experienced players who love Diablo and are quite realistic and rational in their complaints. This is mirrored many other places on the internet as well. People really want to like Diablo 3 but the game itself makes it difficult at times. They had a previous iteration and over a decade of experience, it's exasperating that the game has all of these issues.

I suspect the inevitable expansion will add a lot of depth and do much to address these things but at this point it's likely 2 years away. One thing they can do in the meantime is retune Inferno so that it doesn't require such specific builds and item combos from each class. I don't regret my purchase at all, it was $60 well spent but I was hoping to get a lot more out of it.

I think they've simplified Diablo 3 to the point it has poor longevity. After 2 weeks, I'm bored and almost ready to move on. I can't imaging months or years of the same lousy loot, next to impossible for my barb inferno mode, and constant downtime.

Hey - maybe that's why the game seems to be down most of the time I want to play, otherwise I would have been done with it in the first week!

eunichron wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 22:04:I think you guys are suffering from a false sense of nostalgia. As you all said, you played Diablo 2 for years, as did I... but after years of Diablo 2 how long was it before you had personally found every unique/set item in the game? How long was it until your character had the absolute best gear possible?

People found uniques and sets while leveling, never said anything about having the best stuff. It was just cool to find interesting items instead of generic crap and only having a chance at the best stuff when you hit level 60 as if the game was an MMO. The thing about Diablo II was that it had the generic crap that is the loot of Diablo III but it also had all of the interesting stuff on top of that which is pretty important.

I'd agree as far as legendaries. At the very least in Diablo 2 even extremely low level uniques were useful in some very specific builds. As it is the legendaries in Diablo 3 are pretty generic and don't offer anything unique over their rare counterparts, other than maybe an additional stat. At the very least Blizzard has said they're taking a second look at the power of legendaries and will be buffing them... but what I'd really like to see are more unique stat bonuses (such as Dual Leech from Diablo 2) to actually make them desirable for certain builds. However, as far as drop rate, I don't have a problem with it currently. I've found two legendaries while playing to date, my friend found 3 in a matter of hours while farming mats for the Whimseyshire staff. As I said in my previous post, that is the nature of random loot.

I think Dades is spot on here as well. It's not just the drop rate, but it's the overall generic feeling of all the loot in the entire game. Every item now is essentialy locked to a level-range with a specific stats budget, and with random stats. You can either hope to get extremely lucky, or just use large-scale statistics to your advantage and use the AH. There's no specific items/builds to shoot for. The entire gaming experience from 1-60 feels like a WoW-like grind where the entire journey and everything you pick up on the way is throw-away junk in the end because you know that once you unlock the next bracket, anything you've got on you will be easily replaceable over the course of a few hours. Holy leveled loot, Batman.... Diablo 2 sure as hell wasn't like this.

Diablo 2 had this staggered difficulty curve where you'd occasionally get the intensely satisfying feeling of *really* going up in power when you found a new unique, or put some additional skillpoints in your core skills. In Diablo 3, I'm feeling none of that. It lasted for a short while during the first 20-30 levels as you unlocked runes, but after that? The skill- and difficulty curve, with the exception of cheap monster combinations, has been more or less completely flat all the way to inferno, with the occasional +15 <primary stat> here, and +10 there, which only serves to even things out while you grind your way to 60.

I'm currently bored to tears with D3. I hope a future expansion or mega-patch fixes it. The current state of D3 really isn't that different from Diablo 2 Classic. Before the expansion, there were no exceptional quality uniques, no rune-words, no sockets etc.. All you could do was hunt rares and hope for lucky combinations, so I never played MP much until the expansion came out and transformed the whole game for the better. Maybe we'll get lucky and Blizzard finds the secret sauce again in two years' time ... Of course, after the hours I've put into the predecessor, I shouldn't completely rule out genre fatigue either, but I definitely feel as if the magic is gone for now.

Kastagir wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 14:27:Having chosen not to purchase Diablo III, I feel no need to complain about it. Every day I read about it however, I find myself looking forward to Torchlight II and (someday) Grim Dawn, all the while feeling grateful for my decision not to give Blizzard my money.

i feel exactly the same as you, and not in an elitist way either.. just happy I skipped a game that so many I trust, aren't exactly thrilled with.. and in fact, are rather "meh" about it.

So "meh" about it, that even though they complain have logged over 100 hours each.....a hell of a lot more than most 60 games these days.....probably triple, sans Skyrim.

Kastagir wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 14:27:Having chosen not to purchase Diablo III, I feel no need to complain about it. Every day I read about it however, I find myself looking forward to Torchlight II and (someday) Grim Dawn, all the while feeling grateful for my decision not to give Blizzard my money.

i feel exactly the same as you, and not in an elitist way either.. just happy I skipped a game that so many I trust, aren't exactly thrilled with.. and in fact, are rather "meh" about it.

I enjoy diablo III a lot but one problem I have with it is that the champ packs in inferno tend to be more homogenized due to the combination of 4 abilities as opposed to 3 for hell, 2 for nightmare and so on. With less combinations possible, you see similar packs quite a bit.

Dades wrote on Jun 2, 2012, 02:41:Finding a few crappy legendary items is a far cry from the hordes of set, unique, runes and other loot you found regularly in Diablo II. You say theres no problem with the drop rate but thats one of the few things that most players I've talked to seem to agree on. Is it more a problem with the quality of what they're finding instead of the quantity? Maybe its a bit of both.

It certainly seems like the loot side of the game is weighted to start at level 60 as if it were an MMO title or something which is a mistake to me. I didn't have to be level 99 to find and wear cool shit in Diablo II, in fact many higher level builds were based around lower level items. This sort of thing seems contrary to Blizzards normal design goals and target market.

Set items are ridiculously rare. I have not even found a legendary yet, tho some friends have, but zero set items between us. We are just about to the end of hell too. There was at least a small chance you could roll a char and find a whole set in D2, now there is no chance at all. Seems wrong.

The biggest problem with the higher difficulty settings is that the elite traits stack to ridiculous levels, with some combos being easy to deal with and others virtually impossible. It's not balanced - it's a random clusterfuck. It's one thing for an enemy to be designed to be tough - it's another entirely to artificially inflate the difficulty by adding more traits. Illusionist is difficult enough at the best of times but combining it with arcane, teleport and fast is just taking the piss.

I'd like to see Blizzard address the way that traits interact. For instance, some of the more powerful traits when combined should increase the time between when they can be used. Blizzard has already accepted that Inferno difficulty isn't right at the moment, so there's at least some hope that something will be done.

In Europe we had the 4th evening in a row without stable servers now. Simply cant play when we want to.

But thats not enough, the balance of the game is just frustrating. from Normal to Hell you always had at least a little bit of progress. In Inferno at Act 2, youre literally dieing more than you can kill monsters AND you still have to skip lots, if not most of the elites.

You could prolly have fun in Inferno, if you had 100 million gold to spend. Farming for that amount of money will take about half a year, if you only have the evenings to play. And if you buy it, you will have to pay something around 4000 Euro right now.

I really want to play. I always find myself trying Inferno over and over again, but then quitting the game with a swift alt-f4 when I just died 20 times in a row again or have to skip the 3rd elite pack in a row, or having one block the way, so we cant continue.

Im also not the only one feeling this way. Seeing so many people quit the game after a few deaths, and my friends complaining about the exact same stuff and playing much less. One of them even made a new char to 60 because he thought it would be easier. But then he realized that its as bad. I havent seen him online for 2 days, before that he was on every single day since release.

I would have actually gotten a refund by now, but after reading that you have to dial an American phone number for that and having wait times of up to 90 minutes, I realized that I would lose as much money on the telephone bill for that call as I paid for the game.

Right now I am only checking one or two times a day for my auctions and hope a few sell for enough that I can finally buy some proper gear - which hasnt happened yet once. I dont play anymore.

This comment was edited on Jun 2, 2012, 05:34.

Waiting for BIS to come back to their senses and do a real ArmA 2 successor.

Finding a few crappy legendary items is a far cry from the hordes of set, unique, runes and other loot you found regularly in Diablo II. You say theres no problem with the drop rate but thats one of the few things that most players I've talked to seem to agree on. Is it more a problem with the quality of what they're finding instead of the quantity? Maybe its a bit of both.

It certainly seems like the loot side of the game is weighted to start at level 60 as if it were an MMO title or something which is a mistake to me. I didn't have to be level 99 to find and wear cool shit in Diablo II, in fact many higher level builds were based around lower level items. This sort of thing seems contrary to Blizzards normal design goals and target market.

eunichron wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 22:04:I think you guys are suffering from a false sense of nostalgia. As you all said, you played Diablo 2 for years, as did I... but after years of Diablo 2 how long was it before you had personally found every unique/set item in the game? How long was it until your character had the absolute best gear possible?

People found uniques and sets while leveling, never said anything about having the best stuff. It was just cool to find interesting items instead of generic crap and only having a chance at the best stuff when you hit level 60 as if the game was an MMO. The thing about Diablo II was that it had the generic crap that is the loot of Diablo III but it also had all of the interesting stuff on top of that which is pretty important.

I'd agree as far as legendaries. At the very least in Diablo 2 even extremely low level uniques were useful in some very specific builds. As it is the legendaries in Diablo 3 are pretty generic and don't offer anything unique over their rare counterparts, other than maybe an additional stat. At the very least Blizzard has said they're taking a second look at the power of legendaries and will be buffing them... but what I'd really like to see are more unique stat bonuses (such as Dual Leech from Diablo 2) to actually make them desirable for certain builds. However, as far as drop rate, I don't have a problem with it currently. I've found two legendaries while playing to date, my friend found 3 in a matter of hours while farming mats for the Whimseyshire staff. As I said in my previous post, that is the nature of random loot.

eunichron wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 22:04:I think you guys are suffering from a false sense of nostalgia. As you all said, you played Diablo 2 for years, as did I... but after years of Diablo 2 how long was it before you had personally found every unique/set item in the game? How long was it until your character had the absolute best gear possible?

People found uniques and sets while leveling, never said anything about having the best stuff. It was just cool to find interesting items instead of generic crap and only having a chance at the best stuff when you hit level 60 as if the game was an MMO. The thing about Diablo II was that it had the generic crap that is the loot of Diablo III but it also had all of the interesting stuff on top of that which is pretty important.

xXBatmanXx wrote on Jun 2, 2012, 00:01:Partially agreeing with you - but where is the longevity in D3 if you can just buy everything at the AH? Or RMAH when it is up?

You're not forced to use the AH, and the game is certainly beatable without using it. My furthest character right now is a Demon Hunter in Act II Inferno, and I've gotten to that point without buying anything off the AH. I can now use my Demon Hunter to farm gear for my other characters (have a Barbarian the just started Inferno, and a few random characters still in Normal). I got lucky and found a decent 600 DPS bow in Act I Inferno that lets me do it; but that's the nature of RNG loot, sometimes you get lucky. Incidentally I have a few friends that are AH whores, constantly blowing all of their gold on new items, and yet only one of them has surpassed me in terms of progression.

I look at it like this; the game up to Inferno is able to be completed with only what you find during regular play. I've done it, so have thousands of other people. Inferno is so ridiculously overtuned at the moment that for almost every class, except Barbarian and possibly Monks (if only due to the fact that they're melee), buying stuff off the AH isn't going to help you anyway. Barbarians on the other hand scale so well with gear, and are so gear dependent, that once you reach Inferno you are almost forced to use the AH, where the only other option is spending days farming the Dark Cellar in Act I or Act IV Hell.

eunichron wrote on Jun 1, 2012, 22:04:I think you guys are suffering from a false sense of nostalgia. As you all said, you played Diablo 2 for years, as did I... but after years of Diablo 2 how long was it before you had personally found every unique/set item in the game? How long was it until your character had the absolute best gear possible? How much of that gear did you get by trading/buying it from other players? How long did you spend farming X boss/miniboss for it? Diablo 3 has been out for 2.5 weeks, are you really expecting to have the best gear possible from a game whose item treadmill is designed to last years (as Diablo 2's did)? Aside from some quirks in itemization (legendaries really should have set stats, i.e. it's fine if the amount of a certain stat is randomized, but finding a Wizard only legendary with strength on it is outright ridiculous), it really isn't any different from Diablo 2 in terms of the rate of acquisition.

Partially agreeing with you - but where is the longevity in D3 if you can just buy everything at the AH? Or RMAH when it is up?